


Post-Gunfight Blues

by katrinawritesthings



Category: SHINee
Genre: Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-18
Updated: 2015-09-18
Packaged: 2018-10-20 19:41:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10669473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katrinawritesthings/pseuds/katrinawritesthings
Summary: gang au??? i put fluff in a gang au“I’m not an asshole,” Taemin says snootily, frowning at Jonghyun like he’s deeply offended. Jonghyun snorts (which hurts his broken nose again) and gestures at Taemin’s still blood-covered hands, wrists.“You brought a knife to a gunfight.”tumblrtw for blood nd violence nd guns nd shit





	Post-Gunfight Blues

Blood streaks over the floor where Jonghyun’s gun drags through it when he pushes it away from where it had been digging uncomfortably into his thigh. His face hurts. Most likely because his nose is broken. He shifts his stiff body a few inches to the left, closer to the fridge and further away from the shards of glass from the bottle that he smashed into the dude that broke his nose’s face. Kibum’s gonna be pissed that he wasted all of that Scotch. He won’t have anything to spike his daiquiris with.

His nose throbs when he takes the damp towel away from it, but at least it’s stopped bleeding. Reaching up and groping around the counter for the paper towels, he tears one off and soaks it in the already bloody bowl of water next to him to wipe his face again. “Stop taking cover in the kitchen,” people keep telling him, “it fucks things up,” but he has water and ice and a Kit-Kat bar right now and they don’t, so he knows what this mobster is going to keep doing.

New pain shoots through his face when he snorts at his own thoughts. Mobster. They’re not fancy enough to be mobsters, despite Minho’s insistence to the contrary. Definitely not enough to be mafia. Maybe a little fancier than a gang, but probably not. All of these things mean the same thing, but he still wishes there was another word with a different connotation to fit what he’s a part of. A ring, maybe. They do do a lot of smuggling, a lot of spying, make a lot of enemies that like to invade their bases and start up surprise gunfights that get his nose broken. Gunfights that leave some of his friends hurt and dead, and all of his enemies dead to their friends, which kind of sucks and makes him feel sort of guilty. He didn’t really sign up for that.

Admittedly though, he’s not a hundred percent sure of what he signed up for in the first place. It turned out to be about half-and-half of what he was expecting. Introduction, interrogation, intimidation, initiation; danger, excitement, risk, thrill; threats, loss, comfort, security. Years of mixed positive and negative experiences have Jonghyun feeling pretty average about his life, in terms of satisfaction. It feels a lot more familiar than he thought it would at first, when he was younger and naive. It’s not the fast-paced, never-ending unpredictability he was expecting, but it’s not boring, either. It’s home, and it’s a job, and it’s friends, just like everything else, except with more guns. Would he follow the same path into it all that he did back then? Probably not. He still harbors his secret old wish to become a singer. But does he regret it?

“You’re crying.”

The thickness of Taemin’s voice compels Jonghyun to actually look up as he approaches. Taemin looks back down at him with bloody hands, lips, and a red soaked right sleeve. Jonghyun can’t begin to fathom how this kid’s teeth haven’t all fallen out with how many times he’s gotten punched in the mouth. He can’t fathom how he didn’t notice that he was crying, either, but as he wipes under his eyes, he finds that Taemin is right. He shrugs and watches as Taemin fills a glass with water to rinse his mouth.

“I cry all the time,” he says. It’s not like this is anything new. It’s probably not good for his nose, though, so he consciously makes an effort to stop. The amount of red that Taemin spits into the sink makes Jonghyun grimace. That can’t have tasted nice.

“Well, why are you crying this time?” he asks.

“Probably because my nose is broken,” Jonghyun hums. Tomorrow he’s gonna look like shit, gross and bruised and lumpy. Ugh. “Also,” he says, watching Taemin dump a good amount of salt into his second glass of water with mild interest, “I don’t know. I was kinda… thinking about them.” He waves a tired hand at one of the other guys that died on the floor just around the corner of the island counters in front of him. Jonghyun shot him to kill him, and then shot him a second time in a moment of immaturity because he’d blown off Jonghyun’s favorite fridge magnet. Now there’s just extra blood on the floor and his magnet is still broken. “And how they have like… families and shit. Friends. Shit they care about. Like us. And now they’re dead. Isn’t that kind of sad?” he asks over the noise of Taemin swishing the saltwater around his mouth and spitting it back out.

“Gunfights always make you so sad and weirdly philosophical,” Taemin mutters. “They were assholes anyway.”

“We’re assholes too, though,” Jonghyun argues. He knows he’s being uncharacteristically melancholy and it’s probably because he’s getting kind of woozy from the pain, but still. It’s not as easy for him to reason deaths into categories like that. Dead is dead, and someone is going to mourn these ones, even if it’s not them.

“ _I’m_ not an asshole,” Taemin says snootily, frowning at Jonghyun like he’s deeply offended. Jonghyun snorts (which hurts his nose again) and gestures at Taemin’s still blood covered hands, wrists.

“You brought a knife to a gunfight,” he says. If that’s not asshole behavior, Jonghyun doesn’t know what is. Taemin and his fucking knives. Always stabbing people. Doing twists and slices and getting too much blood on everything. It’s a fucking mess and completely unnecessary and ruins the fun that knifes are supposed to be. Killing people is what guns are for; threats and torture and revenge are when knives come in. Taemin blows his knife load all over all the time and it’s always bugged Jonghyun more than it should have.

“Correction,” Taemin says, holding up a bloody finger, “knives. Plural.” He turns the sink on full blast and starts washing the red off of him. “Also, I didn’t _bring_ them to anything. I already had them when the gunfight started _around_ me.”

“Whatever.” Jonghyun gingerly lifts his ice pack up to his nose for a few seconds before groaning and tossing it up onto the counter. He’ll ice his nose more later. “We’re still assholes to them, and if they’d killed us, I’d want them to just… know that we had shit we cared about too. Instead of just filing us away as more dead bodies.”

“Hmm,” Taemin hums. Jonghyun rolls his eyes. _Hmm_ indeed. That’s not much of a reply, but Taemin never has been one for these morality questions. He’s too black and white, too “them or us.” He’s too logical where Jonghyun’s too emotional. He watches as Taemin takes a bloody knife and jams it through his shirt at the shoulder, ripping the sleeve away instead of just taking the whole shirt off, revealing a nasty looking gash in his skin. A bullet must have just grazed him.

The two of them never do agree on these things. Taemin humors him anyway, plays with his reasoning, gives him counter-arguments, acknowledges his points. He appreciates that Taemin always has these conversations with him.

He appreciates a lot of things about Taemin. It’s become almost a habit of theirs, to find each other after shit goes down and have talks like this. Sure, they’re just tending their wounds and making idle chatter, but there are obvious subtleties in it all. They’re making sure the other is alive and okay, helping each other wind down, getting to know each other a fraction of a bit more, and worrying in their own ways. Jonghyun finds comfort in how Taemin is still the same as ever. In how he’s an almost emotionless kind of calm, in how he makes things simple, in how him just standing there and clumsily tying a towel around his rinsed shoulder makes Jonghyun want to reach out and speak, reach out and touch.

Neither of those would be odd things to do. They relax together and talk often and they bang more than often, but Jonghyun means in a more... romantic way. Speaking as in confessing and touching as in kissing. He wants to hold hands and shit. He wants something that’s just a bit different from their platonic relationship. He wouldn’t say deeper, or closer, or better, but just... different, in the way that romance is. He can’t put the difference into words, but he knows what it feels like and as he sits here, nose broken, friends hurt, home shot up, he wants it.

Of course, being the first to admit this now, after so long a time spent pushing it away and denouncing it and listing multiple reasons why he doesn’t want to deal with romance--which include how he hates when people hold hands and shit--would make him a giant hypocrite. Or an asshole, at the least.

Good thing he’s agreed to the fact that he is an asshole already.

“Hey,” he says when Taemin picks up one of his bloody knives to wash. No one else has come into this side of the room yet from the open living room or the side door that Taemin came through; he guesses no one is up for an after gunfight beer yet. They probably will start shuffling in soon. Taemin hums in question as he drizzles too much dish soap onto the flat of his knife like some twisted display of domesticity. Jonghyun allows himself a second to grin at the image before rubbing tiredly at his eye. “I love you,” he says bluntly. Taemin pauses with the sponge in his hand to throws Jonghyun a confused glance.

“Okay?” he says. He turns his confusion back to his knife, frowning at it like the dude might’ve hit Jonghyun’s head too hard when he broke his nose. Jonghyun frowns too.

“What _okay_?” he asks. “I just told you I love you. Like, romantically.”

“You loved me before, though?” Taemin says. “I don’t understand what the big deal is.”

“Well, I’m _admitting_ it,” Jonghyun huffs. It’s pretty obvious. This isn’t going at all like he’d planned it to go two minutes ago. Taemin rinses his first knife off, then pulls a second, even bloodier one from his back pocket.

“You’ve _admitted_ it before too,” he says. “But you said you just wanted to ignore it. I’m still confused.”

“Oh my god.” Jonghyun puts his face in his hands, then hisses and stops quickly before he fucks his nose up even more. He can’t tell if he brought this on himself or not with all of his immature anti-romance bullshit before. “Okay--this is me, admitting openly, that one, I love you, and two, that I want to _act on it_.” He catches Taemin’s eye as he scrubs off his second knife. “Like, I want to _be_ in love with you and do… some of that lovey dovey crap that I always said I hated. In moderation. And in private. Come on. I know you know what I mean.” He actually doesn’t know; Taemin is always around fifty percent when it comes to reading people. But usually, he’s at a hundred percent with Jonghyun, so Jonghyun doesn’t know what his problem is. Taemin quickly washes his third knife before he turns and leans on the counter, grabbing a spare towel to dry them off.

“So, you wanna hold my hand and shit?” he asks. Amusement pulls his eyebrows up in a way that mildly offends Jonghyun. “And behave romantically with me? Is that what you’re saying?” He looks almost too amused by all of this. Jonghyun squints at him. He’s going to say something to make Jonghyun feel like a damn fool soon, he knows it. He nods slowly.

“Yeah,” he says. “You know, all of the stuff I said I didn’t want to do before? I changed my mind.” He’s got too much other shit to deal with than denying himself some kisses because of some fucked attitude towards romance. He’s not even repulsed by it. He’s just been being a dick.

“Super,” Taemin smiles brightly, making his eyes big and round and his voice deceptively eager. “So does this mean that I can actually kiss you now? Instead of less intimate gestures, such as licking my own semen out of your asshole?”

The silence that stretches between them is one of the rudest silences that Jonghyun has ever been a part of. He squints at Taemin even harder than before as Taemin’s smile does nothing but grow wider and cockier. Who the fuck does he think he is?

“Because, I mean,” Taemin says when Jonghyun doesn’t say anything, “those platonic ass fuckings just weren’t close enough for me, you know? Touching our lips together will be a dream come true.”

“You know what?” Jonghyun snaps. “Fuck you.” Not a week goes by without Taemin making fun of how Jonghyun sees kissing as a purely romantic thing. So what if he wants to save his lips for love. He thinks it’s cute and sweet. Taemin’s grin just turns into more of a smirk.

“Are you sure that’s not too platonic for you now?” he asks. Jonghyun huffs. He feels like a dude with a bullet wound on his arm should be a little less obnoxious.

“Look, just--” He stands up slowly, clumsily, so he doesn't make himself dizzy, and steps up close to Taemin, pressing him almost politely against the counter. He slides his arms slowly over Taemin’s shoulders and takes a breath. If Taemin’s gonna be a little shit about it, then Jonghyun is going to kiss him himself. Even if he does probably still have blood in his mouth.

Uncharacteristically gentle hands settle on his waist; Taemin twitches an eyebrow at him with half a shrug. Jonghyun smiles in spite of his grumpiness. Looks like Taemin is gonna take their first kiss somewhat seriously after all. Letting his eyes slide shut, Jonghyun wraps his arms more around Taemin’s neck and leans forward to press their lips together gently.

It goes well, and Jonghyun lets out a soft sigh at the plush receptiveness of Taemin’s mouth, for about four seconds. Then, Taemin shifts ever so slightly so their noses bump together an infinitesimal amount--which turns into an extreme amount of pain for Jonghyun. He pulls back with a groan. God damn it. He never factored a broken nose into how hard it would be to get this confession done. He just wants to make out with his kind-of-new love, not deal with this pain bullshit.

“Here,” Taemin giggles, and when Jonghyun opens his eyes, Taemin is holding out his towel full of ice cubes from before. Jonghyun takes it with a pout and sits back down onto the floor, gingerly holding it against his face.

“We’re redoing that kiss in a week,” he grumbles. He’s been putting this off for too long to let that atrocity be it. Taemin sits down next to him and bumps their shoulders together playfully. At least it’s his opposite shoulder that’s hurt.

“Looking forward to it,” he grins. “Also, I’m gonna kiss you after I blow you. No takebacks.”

“Fine, fine,” Jonghyun says. He smothers a small laugh in his hand. Like he would actually be bothered by that. Taemin smiles pleasantly next to him for a second, obviously proud of himself, before he sighs and rolls his injured shoulder.

“Where the fuck is Jinki?” he asks. “I’m staining a good towel here.”

“He’s probably taking care of someone that’s been actually shot, like in the chest or something,” Jonghyun shrugs. Taemin scoffs a disgusted noise, like he’s offended that the two of them don’t get priority over severe bullet wounds.

“What’s the point of having a med school graduate doctor with us if he’s never around,” he grumbles. “Give me some of your ice.” He nudges Jonghyun’s side and holds out a new empty towel. Jonghyun opens up his towel of partially melted cubes and nudges them into Taemin’s. Then, while Taemin is bundling them all up, he leans forward and presses a careful, gentle, tiny little kiss to his lips. Taemin pauses for just a second to smile.


End file.
